Brook Lopez and Thaddeus Young have played their final games for the Brooklyn Nets this season.
Mike Mazzeo of ESPN.com first brought word of the news:
The Brooklyn Nets will shut down Brook Lopez and Thaddeus Young for the rest of the season, Brooklyn interim coach Tony Brown said before Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans.
The Nets have six games remaining in the regular season. They have long been eliminated from playoff contention and had been resting Lopez and Young in recent contests.
Sitting Lopez and Young to close out the year is a good call for a variety of reasons.
First, the Nets aren’t playing for anything. Not the playoffs, not even a draft pick. They needn’t pay any attention to wins or losses. It makes sense to shut down Lopez and Young, two players under contract for the longer haul, rather than risk injury during a close-out stretch of futility.
Secondly, benching Lopez and Young gives the Nets to experiment with different lineups and different players, such as Thomas Robinson, to see who might fit with the team long term.
Brooklyn has a ton of players entering free agency this summer and must decide who to keep around. The Nets, after all, down control the rights to their own first-rounder until 2019. Signing free agents and retaining diamonds in the rough give them the best chance of improving their team over the next few years.
